


The Dangerous Shuffling of Feet

by voleuse



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-31
Updated: 2009-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-04 01:54:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>That smile, all fleet, in no simple dance</em>.<br/>Three things I believe about Abby Sciuto.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dangerous Shuffling of Feet

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers. Title and summary adapted from Michael Conrad Dickman's _4\. Muhammad Ali Underwater_.

**i. she's good at self-defense**

When she was ten, Abby got into a fight. There had been a one-eared cat and a neighborhood bully, and her parents had told her to always keep an eye out for the littler things in the world. She'd torn her favorite jacket, which hurt worse than her split lip.

Two weeks after that, her Uncle Bradford handed her a set of brass knuckles with a grin. "Anybody tries to pick on you," he said, "you put these on."

"Then what?" she asked. She weighed the pieces in her palms, the metal cool against her skin.

He shifted his stance, raised his fists and bounced. "You see?"

Abby tried to mimic his movements, but the rings were too loose around her fingers and she stumbled when she tried to punch.

He watched her for a moment, then stretched his hand back out. "First, let's get you to understand center of gravity."

"Like falling?" she asked him, returning the brass.

"Better than that," he said, and they began.

Abby spent the rest of the afternoon standing on one foot, then crouching, then leaping onto her other foot. She fell more than once, gathered more than one bruise, but she did develop a keen understanding of balance.

She didn't get the brass knuckles back, not that month, but the next time the poor cat got chased into a tree, she gave the bully a split lip of his own.

**ii. she knows what they think of her**

Once every couple of months, Abby changed her work look. It was usually denim, a Ramones T-shirt, and a red corduroy jacket studded with paper clips. Once every couple of months, HR sent a building-wide memo about inspections and dress codes and friendly work environments, and this was her response. Not that it was necessary, of course--she just wanted them to know that she was listening.

Tony called the outfit her corporate drag and laughed, while McGee looked freaked out. Nobody else commented; most everybody was used to her now.

When she first started at NCIS the head of HR asked her, politely and firmly, to avoid disrupting the workplace with her appearance. She had worn jeans and plain T-shirts under her lab coat, and Converse knock-offs laced with plain purple.

When Gibbs caught her clutching her neck for the fourteenth time that morning, he raised his eyebrow at her.

"I feel really naked," she confessed. "And also short."

He stared her down for a moment, then nodded. He handed her a manila folder, then turned and strode towards the door. "Wear whatever you want," he proclaimed, his voice bouncing back from the glass.

"Thanks, Gibbs!" she said. And HR never called her into their office ever again.

**iii. she only lies to gibbs about one thing**

She had this fantasy she never shared with anybody, where she ran into Gibbs at a club.

Not just a club, though, but a genuine nightclub, one of those pseudo-smoky pseudo-speakeasies that played jazz and served everything on the rocks. She'd be wearing a long dress, the hem jagged velveteen around her ankles, and gloves that laced all the way to her elbow.

She would turn, and he'd be standing there, and he would laugh. She would smile and hold out her arms, because nobody would refuse her a dance. Nobody ever did, after all.

They would dance. And maybe there'd some other stuff after that, but that was normal. It _was_ a fantasy, after all.

She never thought about it at work, except when she was super-thirsty, or cold, or really proud of herself. She never said anything, not to Tony, not to Ziva, not even to Kate, before.

Even so, she was pretty sure, sometimes, that he knew what she'd been thinking, because the smile he gave to her was exactly the same as the one he gave her in her daydream.

And she smiled, and he raised her eyebrows, and asked her what she had for him now.


End file.
